“Thanks to the liberalisation of air service agreements we can do this between Taiwan and Japan. But we need more such agreements in Asia, otherwise our cargo loads will be very difficult to increase,” Sun comments.

On 2 January, Taiwan and Israel signed an aviation agreement, as part of their efforts to establish closer ties between the two countries following a visa-waiver agreement that took effect in August last year.

The carrier has also re-routed flights to Europe. “We operate via Southeast Asia to Europe and [are] connecting new points together, [such as] from Bangkok [Thailand] or Ho Chi Minh City [Vietnam] to Europe,” he adds.